I would appreciate assistance in testing a Keyman IPA Keyboard for Android

I’ve been asked to create a Keyman IPA keyboard for mobile devices. I’ve created a first draft of the layout, but would appreciate some assistance in improving it’s usability.

In order to test the layout, you’ll need to have the Keyman app installed on your mobile device. The Keyman app is in both the Google Play Store as well as the Apple App Store
This keyboard is supposed to be cross-platform, but I lack the ability to test it on iOS devices.

Once you have the Keyman app, you can go here to get the keyboard

sdysart.github.io

On that page, you can click on the blue icon on the bottom to get the keyboard.

This Google Doc page will provide you with basic documentation as to the mobile layout

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K5Fz-PztdrxakvVQkC9hoWuaZZ_77lJUql-V2eKjBFw/edit?usp=sharing

Once you’ve tested the keyboard, I would appreciate your using this google form to make suggestions and provide insights on how to improve the layout.

https://goo.gl/forms/fNnrPxqhVtgsLZPq2

Some of the things I’m looking for help with

How to best organize the diacritic layer to make it easier to find the diacritic you are after?
What’s the easiest way to access the diacritic and tone layers? In this version of the keyboard, I’m presenting two options. The Diacritic Layer and Tone layer both have their own button and are accessible by long pressing the 123 button.
Are there base character + diacritic combinations that are used frequently enough to warrant that combinations being available via long pressing the base character?

Also, this keyboard is supposed to present the user with the SIL IPA Keyman Keyboard if the user is using an external keyboard on their mobile device. I lack the ability to test to see if that’s working properly.

The mobile layout is designed so that any of the characters that you would have accessed using the Shift, >,<, or = key and the base character are available by long pressing the base character in the default (or lower case) layer.

For reference, the SIL IPA keyboard for Keyman Desktop can be found here
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/page.php?site_id=nrsi&id=uniipakeyboard

The pdf documentation fot the SIL IPA keyboard for Keyman can be downloaded from here directly
http://scripts.sil.org/cms/scripts/render_download.php?format=file&media_id=IPAUni_14.pdf&filename=IPAUni_14.pdf

(also posted in the LingTransoft Google Group)

I am unable to download the keyboard on my iPhone. Keyman says “keyboard download error, unsupported URL.”

hmm, I’m getting the same error on my wife’s tablet. Sorry about that - we’ll have someone on the Keyman team look into that…

I am able to install into Keyman 10.0.122 alpha on iOS 11.2.5. Can you let me know what Keyman and iOS/Android version you are trying to install on?

I’ve installed the keyboard now on my iPhone after upgrading to Keyman 10 beta. It works. Good job!

Can someone put the pdf documentation for the SIL ipa keyboard that’s on this thread on the same page as the download? It’s taken two days of looking for it to find it here and I was about tor esort to taking screenshots of the web page in order not to have to come online to find it each time…

Almost all of our keyboards now have online documentation. From here: https://keyman.com/keyboards/sil_ipa click on the documentation link which will take you here: https://help.keyman.com/keyboard/sil_ipa/1.7/sil_ipa.php

For offline use:
Once the keyboard is installed, you can go to Configuration, click on the keyboard and then on the little questionmark at the top right and the documentation will popup.

It’s a lot of work for us to maintain PDF versions of documentation. But Some web browsers now let you save a web page as PDF. In Chrome, press Ctrl+P and then select ‘Save as PDF’ in the Destination box. You can also install the “Microsoft Print to PDF” printer driver that lets you create a PDF from any app or web browser.

Ok, thanks. I didn’t realise it was s big job.

Lizzie

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